CFP: Feminist Interpretations of William James
Submission deadline: February 17, 2012
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“The world experienced…comes at all times with our body as its center, center of vision, center of action, center of interest…”
–William James, Principles of Psychology
“Out of whose subjectivity has this ideal [of objectivity] grown?”
–Lorraine Code, What Can She Know?
The American Pragmatist philosopher William James was in many respects ahead of his time, emphasizing attention to the situated and bodily character of knowledge and value before the advent of standpoint theory, as well as the concrete consequences of philosophizing in a way that pre-figures recent feminist efforts to investigate the troubling collective habits that academic philosophy has helped to perpetuate. Although James’ own status as a feminist is dubious, his work, many have argued, is ripe with resources for contemporary feminist epistemology, ethics, phenomenology and philosophy of psychology.
We seek scholars interested in contributing to a panel discussion on feminist readings of James to be held at the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy meeting in the spring of 2013, and ultimately, to the anticipated edited volume, Feminist Interpretations of William James (to be submitted to Penn State Press’ “Re-Reading the Canon” series, ed. Nancy Tuana). Any and all feminist approaches to and/or criticisms of James are welcome.
Please respond to Shannon Sullivan ([email protected]) or Erin C. Tarver ([email protected]) to express your interest in participating in the panel and/or the volume by February 17, 2012. For now, we hope to hear from people who are interested, possibly interested, gently persuadable, and/or have questions -- no firm commitments are needed at this time, in other words. Abstracts (of no less than 600 words) or full papers (of no more than 3500 words)for the SAAP panel will be due to Shannon and Erin by August 1, 2012. We hope that the discussion generated by the SAAP panel will help spark new ideas for feminist engagements with James, but you need not participate on the SAAP panel to contribute to the Re-reading the Canon volume later on. Detailed information on submitting to the Re-reading the Canon volume will be forthcoming in 2013, after the annual SAAP meeting in March.